Saturday, February 20, 2016

It would probably be good for my mental health to look away. But years of disciplining myself to watch this stuff means I've seen this.

At his closing rally, the Donald excited his partisans with this:

The standout topic, however, was terrorism and national security. Trump repeated – favorably – an apparent myth about how General John Pershing summarily executed dozens of Muslim prisoners in the Philippines with tainted ammunition during a guerilla war against the occupying United States.

“He took fifty bullets, and he dipped them in pig’s blood,” Trump said. “And he had his men load his rifles and he lined up the fifty people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the fiftieth person he said ‘You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.’ And for 25 years there wasn’t a problem, okay?”

...The moral of the tale, according to Trump: “We better start getting tough and we better start getting vigilant, and we better start using our heads or we’re not gonna have a country, folks.”

The reporter helpfully points to a source explaining that the story is a recurring fantasy, passed around among Islamophobic Israelis police and settlers, movie super heroes, and U.S. spooks. Snopes explains:

... the desire for simplistic solutions to complex problems has spawned several widely-circulated notions that seek to transform a fight against terrorism to the easily-manageable level of a horror film or a comic strip. One popular notion is the concept that a pig is to a Muslim as a crucifix is to a vampire: simply arm yourself with a porker, and you can use it to render even the most fanatical terrorist helpless, sending him cowering in fear lest he come into contact with anything porcine.

... messages such as the ones quoted above could be considered as silly as Muslims' proclaiming that a good way to throw the U.S. into disarray would be to "bomb" America with juicy steaks on Fridays, because "Americans are Christians," and "everyone knows Christians who eat meat on Fridays go to Hell."

Not that people who lap up this stuff are going to be dissuaded either by reason or mockery.

I wonder whether, as they have with Trump's "Mexican rapists", the Donald's GOP competitors will feel obliged to take on this crackpot notion as well.

2 comments:

He's worried he's going to be beaten by Cruz's far more angry rhetoric (latest polls show the numbers closing). I don't know that Trump believes a lot of what he says, but he knows he has to get elected first and by those who do believe that crap. There is not one of them that wouldn't do a lot of the same things with cutting taxes on the richest, torturing, going to war all over the world, and ruining our economy. Our only hope is that the Democrats win. Although if Trump won, who knows what he'd do. Vox had a good article on Rubio for those who think he's just this sweet boy...Rubio worse than Trump. To me, they are all scary...

What's this blog about?

My musings on current events, current projects, current anxieties and current delights.

I started this under the Bush regime when any grain of sand thrown into the gears of the over-reaching imperial state seemed worthwhile.

I have worked to elect more and better Democrats -- and to hammer the shit out of them once we get them in office so they do the things their constituents want and need. It's a big job.

I have endured the dashed potential for a more transformational regime under Obama. The man has made himself an accomplice in the imperial crimes of his predecessor as well as committing his own. He has also almost certainly been the most progressive president most of us will live to see. I fear we'll look back on his years in office with mild gratitude for a respite from national leadership that was habitually stupid and vicious, as well as wrong.

Visitors here will find a lot of commentary on books I'm reading. I am very intentionally reading intensively offline these days. When it feels hard to find direction, it's time to learn something new.

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About Me

I'm a progressive political activist who runs trails and climbs mountains whenever any are available. I've had the privilege to work for justice in Central America (Nicaragua and El Salvador), in South Africa, in the fields of California with the United Farmworkers Union, and in the cities and schools of my own country. I'm a Christian of the Episcopalian flavor; we think and argue a lot. For work, I've done a bit of it all: run an old fashioned switch-board; remodeled buildings and poured concrete; edited and published periodicals, reports and books; and organized for electoral campaigns. I am currently an independent consultant to organizations seeking "help when you have to make a fight."